Facebook is awesome for fundraising

Making a value judgment on Facebook based only on donations received completely overlooks the inherent value that Facebook offers. Facebook creates awareness for your campaign.

When was the last time you actually forwarded an e-mail appeal to a few friends? Exactly. Facebook’s strength is in the reach that’s created as users talk about your campaign.

Your fundraising strategy should include ways to get people to talk about the cause. The more they talk about it, the more their friends become aware of your fundraising campaign.

Facebook helps begin relationships with donors

So let’s say that one of your current Facebook fans makes a few comments on your page, and one of their friends becomes interested in that conversation. They click over to your page, add their own comments, and become a new fan. You just acquired a future potential donor! And although they probably won’t donate to your cause any time soon, they might in the future.

Facebook allows core suporters to share your campaign

If you’ve done a few fundraising campaigns for your nonprofit, you’ve no doubt realized that most of your donations come from a small group of core supporters who donate again and again. And hopefully you have a peer-to-peer fundraising strategy where these cultists can support an event and make appeals to their friends and family members. And guess where they go first to share their fundraising page?

Gotta call you out John, sorry. Razoo’s post does not say that 33% of donations come from email while only 7% come from Facebook. The graph (cleared up by Mike) is a comparison of *conversion rates*. You would, in theory, get more donations from Facebook if Facebook drives 5x as many clicks. The number of clicks, and therefore donations that you receive depends on the relative sizes of your audience, your messaging, and a bunch of other things.

I agree it’s a waste of time to conclude Facebook doesn’t work, especially if you also measure the impact of additional views, clicks, Likes, and other associated activity from FB and other social networks. Email and Facebook constituencies are completely different, and you should benchmark them differently.

I think we should look at real example – something covered in this blog: http://bit.ly/NaeY09
Facebook was used a platform to raise funds for British teacher in coma in Thailand. After just 2 weeks of creating a group, they received more than 14,000 pounds from family, friends and even strangers !!